Fire Beneath the Ashes
by reader13lovesbooks
Summary: Ashton Abernathy is truly his father's son. Oneshot for dleshae, set in the Sweetest Mockery canon. In which Haymitch has a long overdue conversation with his eldest child.
**This oneshot is set in the universe of my big HG fic, The Sweetest Mockery. I highly recommend you go over and read that first, to get a better grasp of the setting and characterization. But if you don't feel up to reading 100k+ words at the moment, here's what you need to know:**

 **In the Sweetest Mockery universe, Haymitch and Maysilee pulled the star-crossed lovers routine during their Games and emerged as co-Victors. Over the years they had five children together, the eldest being their twin son and daughter, Ashton/Ash and Lorraine/Rain. Ashton was reaped at age twelve and, against all odds, won his Games, but he rapidly regressed into alcohol and drugs** **—essentially, Haymitch in the original books, but of course not the** _ **exact**_ **same. The actual fic focuses on Haymitch and Maysilee's third child, Ember, and how she and her little brother Cedric, along with all the other tributes, are busted out of the arena before the 74th Hunger Games even begins. Ashton has had a limited role so far in Sweetest Mockery, but it has been established that he is, essentially, a "broken" man, but not so much that he couldn't help his family plot how to rescue his little siblings from the arena.**

 **My reader dleshae won my latest oneshot contest and basically asked for a gritty story that took a glimpse inside Ashton's mind. Et voila.**

* * *

"Another one, Ripper."

"You sure about that, Abernathy? You've already had five or six—"

" _Another one,_ Ripper. You want my money or not?"

Ripper shrugs in uncaring resignation. "It's your liver." She pours him another drink.

Ashton Abernathy chugs the pungent liquid. He's so used to the sensation of alcohol burning its way down his esophagus that his throat only registers a mild sting as the liquor sears into his belly. Slowly, the numbness spreads. Soon he'll be able to feel nothing.

Bliss.

If his hands are shaking as he fumbles with coins for Ripper—he probably pays too much, as usual, but it's not like he can't afford it, or like he spends money on anything but alcohol anyway—well, that's the price to blot out his demons. Demons that torment him with children's voices, weeping, screaming.

 _I'm sorry, I'm sorry!_

 _Please, no. Not me, please._

 _Don't kill me, I don't wanna die, I wanna go home._

Shit. One more. He needs at least one more if he's going to make it through today. "Ripper—"

"Don't give him anymore, or you'll have me to deal with, sweetheart."

Ashton inhales sharply and glowers into his empty glass as the seat beside him is taken. "Micromanaging my friends now, are you?"

Haymitch snorts. "Oh please, kid. We both know that Ripper is interested in your wallet, not your charming personality." He looks over at the woman in question. "Isn't that right, Ripper?"

"Quite right," she answers shamelessly before ducking into her back room.

"You…" Ashton clenches his jaw. "The only thing this changes is _how_ I get my alcohol today, not whether or not I actually obtain it. You know as well as I do that this won't stop me."

"I do know," Haymitch agrees. "Too well."

"So why bother with this if you know it's futile?"

"Because you're my son, and I won't let you work toward slowly killing yourself the same way I almost did. Not if I can help it."

Ashton pushes his glass away. "Well, you can't help it. You can't help me. No one can. So leave me the fuck alone and save your energy for something worth salvaging." He stands abruptly—too abruptly, he sways as he gets to his feet, but he manages to stay upright and retain what scraps of dignity he has left—and begins to stumble his way out of the Hob.

Haymitch follows him, but not so close that Ashton will whirl around and make a scene. He's tempted to, anyway. The elder Victor isn't even trying to hide the fact he's following him. Ashton's blood boils. Once upon a time, he could have shaken off the old man without breaking a sweat, just like how he threw the Careers off his tail in—

 _No._ Don't think about that.

When he totters into daylight, he lurks beside the Hob's door. It opens, and Ashton swings for Haymitch. The elder Abernathy easily grabs his fist, causing Ashton to lose his already shaky sense of balance. "Nice try, kid."

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" Dimly, Ash is aware that he's acting like a tantrum-throwing twelve-year-old, albeit a very foul-mouthed twelve-year-old. Then again, why shouldn't he act like one? For him, development as a normal human being essentially ceased the summer he was twelve. Really, Ashton Abernathy is just a little boy who stopped existing long ago, when that first life bled away beneath his hands. Just a little boy wrapped inside a bitter, scarred man who depends on alcohol and drugs and more alcohol in order to find the will to keep living.

You know, if you can call what he does "living." It's more like subsisting. Getting by. Eking out an existence as his liver slowly fails him.

Haymitch grabs him by his shirtfront. "You're embarrassing yourself, Ashton Abernathy."

"Hell if I care! I'm already the laughingstock of the district. Of Panem. Of our family—if it's even still mine."

"That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard," Haymitch growls. "Family is family, like it or not. Why else would your mother and I bother checking up on you every day in that sty you call a house, to make sure you haven't drowned in your own vomit? You're our son, and that's the end of the story."

"Unfortunately for you, eh?" Ashton sneers before shoving Haymitch away. "If only everyone in this fucking country didn't pry into our family's lives 24/7. Then maybe you could pretend you didn't know me. My drinking time wouldn't be interrupted, and you wouldn't have to waste your time anymore on the only tribute you and Maysilee Donner ever got out of the arena. Everyone's happy. I have no father, you have no son… Well, you have the one son, Ceddy," Ashton corrects, trying not to dwell too long on his little brother. As a toddler, Cedric adored his big brother. Now, the kindest he ever looks upon Ashton is with unease.

To his bafflement, a grim, bitter smile cracks Haymitch's face. "That's impossible, Ash. If anyone else had seen you just now, they would have realized just how much you truly are my son, in the best and worst ways possible. If you'd seen me during the first few years after my Games, you would agree. No one, least of all myself, could ever forget who we are to each other."

"Who we are to each other," Ashton echoes hollowly. "Right. You're the mentor who got me out of the arena, and I'm the tribute who ended up a disappointment of a Victor. I don't see what other relationship you might be referring to, because your son died ten years ago. And he's not coming back." His voice cracks a little at the end. Abruptly, he ducks his head, half-hoping and half-fearing that Haymitch will just go away.

"No. He's not coming back. Not for me. But what about for his mother and siblings?"

Ashton grimaces. "They deserve better than him." He kicks some gray slush on the ground. " _She_ sent you, then? Should've figured. You never seek me out on your own if you can help it." He violently quashes memories of a young boy silently, desperately crying out for his father to _look_ at him, really _look_ at him, and see what's wrong with him and fix everything and tell him it'll be okay. But Haymitch never did.

(At least, Ashton thinks he never did.)

His former mentor shakes his head. "Your mother didn't send me. As a matter of fact, she told me not to look for you, not to pressure you. She wanted you to make up your own mind, whether or not to come to her with questions."

"But what, you knew better?" Ashton sneers. "This once, you decided not to defer to her on all things regarding your children and _try?_ " He's being unfair. He knows he is. Haymitch Abernathy is a man of many flaws, but being a bad father is not one of those flaws. At least not when his children have yet to reach the point of hopelessness. Ashton surpassed that marker long ago and is now somewhere in between damnation and despair.

A childish urge to reach out and cling to his father, his father who would shoo away all the monsters under the bed and the skeletons in his closet and the demons in his head for him, nearly overwhelms him. Or maybe that's the wave of nausea that abruptly washes over him and has him puking Ripper's wares into a snowdrift.

Callused fingers brush back Ashton's limp, sweaty, overgrown hair from his face. Just like the first time Haymitch found him drunk and held his head over the toilet, even as he berated his young son for his behavior. But thirteen-year-old Ash was soon been put to bed, and in the morning he woke up not just to more scolding but also a breakfast tray filled with foodstuffs suitable for one with a hangover. And then Ash hears himself say, in a tiny voice more suited for a thirteen-year-old rather than a man of twenty-two, "I want to go home."

"I want you to come home," Haymitch commiserates. "We all do. But not like this, Ash. You know our deal. Your mother and I aren't afraid of you in this state, but your sisters and brother…"

"As if Emmy could be scared of anything," Ash mutters. His baby sister is no longer his baby sister; that title belongs to Summer now, six-year-old Summer who doesn't truly comprehend that the frightening alcoholic down the street is related to her. The last time Ash lived at home, Ember was still very much a child, not much older than Summer is now. Willful, reckless, a tad spoiled. But only the other day, Ash glimpsed her in town and nearly thought she was their mother, albeit with black hair. He nearly called out to "Maysilee" to ask why the drastic dye job.

Haymitch chuckles as he guides him to a nearby spigot, so Ash can rinse his mouth. "I can't bring you home, but I can take you to the next best place."

Somehow, in his still-inebriated condition (although he's rapidly sobering up; his body processes alcohol unfortunately quickly), Ash manages to negotiate his way to the other side of the fence, with a little help from Haymitch. They wander into the forest, and Ash soon realizes they're following the path of the early morning runs of their old training regime. He and his twin Rain haven't taken this path in years—haven't trained in years—but perhaps Mom and Dad still use it for Emmy and Ceddy's training regimes now. Memories of the hard workouts of his childhood—critical beyond words for any child named Abernathy, doomed for the arena, to death or worse—are interspersed with even happier thoughts. Shimmying up trees to see if he or Rainie were faster. Playfully chasing Emmy, then a shrieking and giggling toddler, through the forest. Hopping on stepping stones across the stream. Roasting marshmallows, a rare treat, over a campfire for which he labored long and hard to kindle.

Haymitch resumes their conversation as they stroll past a clump of plants that, if Ash's memory is correct (and yet to be muddled by his overuse of narcotics), yield an explosion of strawberries in the summer. "Your mother came to see you yesterday. Alone." A statement, not a question. But Ash answers it anyway, with a weary nod.

 _Your younger siblings are in danger._ The only words Mom needed to grab his attention and sober him up almost instantly. But no more a reaction than that. His lack of a verbal response, after many long moments of silence, dimmed his mother's blue eyes and slumped her shoulders and turned her around to leave his house.

He watched her go, as a voice in his head screamed at him to call out to her, to ask for more information, to tell her that family was the only thing stopping him from purposefully overdosing but also that he would die—more than that, kill, again—for any one of them, not least Emmy and Ceddy.

But why him? Why come to him, a pathetic drunk, for help? (If that's what his mother wanted in the first place. He's pretty sure it was.) He'd be more likely to fuck up than help any plan they had to save his little sister and brother from the Games, as Ash deduced in those tense moments before Mom gave up on him and left. They didn't need him. They were better off without him, as they always have been.

"I disappointed her. As usual," Ashton mutters.

"She didn't tell me what you said to her."

"Because I didn't say anything. I didn't even have the balls to say no, sorry, I'm too chicken-shit to lend my siblings a hand. I had to wait for her to infer it on her own."

"Ashton Abernathy," Haymitch says quietly. "You are many things, both bad and good. A coward is not one of them. You are too much your mother's son to be one."

"You're wrong!" Ashton bursts out, startling a couple winter birds into flight. "I am a coward, and a weak one at that. I'm terrified, of everything. Terrified of the real world, terrified of facing everyone's scorn as they judge me, terrified of you and Mom and Emmy looking at me in disgust, terrified of Ceddy and Summy being afraid of _me,_ terrified of going to sleep because I know, I _know,_ that nothing good will come of it." His voice breaks, half-sobbing. "I'm still in there. I still hear them screaming, crying, begging. I still feel their blood spraying my face, feel it caking my hands. I still feel them dying. _I'm still in there._ And I'm so scared of being back there that I hide in my bottles and pills so I can forget for a few hours that I'm living on borrowed time, because I should have died in there ten years ago. So you see, you really do have a weakling of a coward for a son." Ashton sinks to sit on a fallen log and buries his face in his hands.

Haymitch sits beside him. "If you think you are a weakling and a coward," he says heavily, "then it's my fault for not dispelling that illusion from you long before today." Ash doesn't look up, but he listens. "You've heard how I was after my Games. Drinking my liver to ruin, hating myself, not too different from you. Everything you think and feel, I've thought and felt them too. And I knew it. I knew I was the best person to talk to you about these things, even more than your mother. But when I couldn't get through to you, I gave up. Too soon. I should've tried harder. But I didn't. I failed you. I still don't think you're weak or a coward, but if you were, then it would have been through no fault of yours, but mine. You've always had the potential to be a much greater, better man than me. You still could be. But the reason you aren't today, right now, is because I failed you."

Ash blinks hot liquid out of his eyes. "If you failed, it's because I shut you out. So maybe we're both at fault."

Haymitch looks at him evenly, a shade of sadness in his expression. "It's egregiously unfair that you and your siblings must suffer on your mother's behalf and mine. Sometimes, I wonder what if your mother had let me die…"

"Then none of the five of us would exist," Ash interjects. "If Mom had kids with someone else, they wouldn't be us." Then he manages a smirk. "Still, better her than you. _You'd_ just be a miserable old bastard, like me."

"I think you're right," Haymitch murmurs, half-amused and half-grave. "Well, no use thinking on it too much, I suppose. We can't change the past, only the future." He straightens. "So, Ash. Are you going to hear what your mother and I have planned? Will you help us protect Ember and Cedric?"

This time, Ash does not answer with silence. This time, he nods firmly and says, "I will." Personally, he doubts some of what Haymitch has said. Be a better man than him? Not likely. But perhaps this is the first step to Ash at least becoming a good man. A good brother. A good son. Maybe his siblings will no longer fear him. Maybe his parents will finally be proud of him. Maybe his life will be worth something. "Thank you, Dad."

Ash doesn't specify thanks for what. Neither does his father reply vocally, just squeezes Ash's shoulder. But even that touch speaks volumes, and for the first time in a long while, Ash feels a fire kindling in his not-so-dead soul again.

* * *

" _The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes." -Pierre Corneille_


End file.
